HTC U11 vs. HTC U Ultra: Which HTC phone reigns supreme?

When HTC said it would nix affordable phones in favor of several high-end handsets, it wasn’t kidding. Case in point? The HTC U11, a new flagship on the heels of this year’s U Ultra.

The HTC U11 and U Ultra don’t share much in common. The U11 omits the U Ultra’s secondary display, for one, and the new phone has a much more powerful processor. But they’re certainly cut from the same cloth, or liquid glass, as the case may be. Both boast HTC’s UltraPixel camera tech and BoomSound speakers, ship with the same amount of memory (4GB), and come preloaded with with HTC’s AI-powered Sense Companion assistant.

Still, there’s enough of a difference between the HTC U11 and U Ultra to crown a winner. To put an end to the debate, we pitted the two phones against each other in a specifications battle to the finish.

The differences between the U11 and U Ultra start under the hood. Both phones share the same RAM (4GB, up to 6GB) and base storage (64GB, up to 128GB) in common. But the U11 packs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835, one of the newest in Qualcomm’s arsenal. The U Ultra, on the other hand, ships with Qualcomm’s aging Snapdragon 821 — the processor in the Google Pixel and OnePlus 3T.

On a surface level, the two processors aren’t all that different. They have the same number of cores — four faster, high-powered cores that kick in for intensive tasks and four power-efficient cores that handle background apps — and architecture. But the Snapdragon 835 — the processor that also powers Samsung’s Galaxy S8 — is built on a 10-nanometer process, which means it crams 30 percent more parts into the same physical space as the Snapdragon 821.

In most apps and real-world scenarios, the Snapdragon 835 appears to best the Snapdragon 821 handily. Anandtech recorded it achieving a score of 3,844 in 3D Mark’s Slingshot Extreme test compared to the Snapdragon 821’s 2,106, and other benchmarks show a performance advantage as high as 40 percent. The U11 is likely to crush day-to-day tasks like a champ, in other words.

To sum up, there’s no question when it comes to overall processing power. We’re expecting the U11 to breeze through apps, games, and other tasks. That’s not to say the U Ultra’s a slouch — the U11 just does things faster.

Winner: HTC U11

Design

At first glance, the U Ultra and U11 don’t look all that different from each other. That’s because they both sport HTC’s bright “liquid surface,” a glass back specially machined to shine and shimmer in the light.

The liquid metal surface isn’t the only design similarity between the two. There’s a lot of unused space near the U11 and U Ultra’s top and bottom, and sizable edges between the screen and edges. The U11 inherits the Ultra’s oval-shaped fingerprint sensor, physical power button, and volume rockers.

Otherwise, though, the U11 shares little in common with its months-old cousin. The rear camera is almost flush with the rear cover as opposed to protruding on the U Ultra, and the dual-LED flash has been moved to the opposite side of the sensor — from the left to the right. The U11’s edges also curve more gradually than the U Ultra’s, and have fewer seams — especially near the U Ultra’s charging port. It evokes the iPhone — right down to the position of the plastic bits that cover the U Ultra’s antennae.

Both the U Ultra and U11 pack four microphones that record high-quality sound from a distance. Neither have a headphone jack; instead, the U Ultra and U11 ship with HTC’s proprietary USB-C USonic headphones, which pack two microphones — one that sits on the outside of your ear canal and one that sits on the inside — to generate a detailed profile of your ear’s anatomy.

But unlike the headphones that shipped with the U Ultra, the U11’s have built-in noise-cancelling. HTC says they work in tandem with the U11’s BoomSound app to drown out the ambient noise around you.

We’re still not convinced that eliminating the 3.5mm audio jack is a great design move. But U11’s overall design improvements and noise-canceling headphones are enough to earn it the win here.

Winner: HTC U11

Display

In our review of the U Ultra, its display — or displays, more accurately — colored us unimpressed.

The 5.7-inch Quad HD Super LCD 5 screen was dimmer than Apple’s iPhone 6S, even at full brightness. Colors seemed relatively accurate, but not from any angle — tilting the HTC U Ultra a little to the side resulted in washed-out blues and reds.

We haven’t had a chance to put the U11’s screen to the test, but we’re not expecting miracles. The U11 packs a slightly smaller 5.5-inch LCD screen with the same Quad HD (2560 x 1440 pixels) resolution as the U Ultra. Assuming HTC hasn’t made any brightness-boosting or color-correcting software tweaks, we wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a difference.

We’re calling this one a draw. The U11’s slightly smaller screen doesn’t appear to offer a marked technological advantage over the U Ultra, and we’re expecting it to perform about — if not exactly — the same.

Winner: Tie

Battery life and charging

Julian Chokkattu/Digital Trends

The U Ultra and U11 share the same 3,000mAh battery capacity. And based on our experiences with the U Ultra, we have a pretty good idea of what to expect.

In our testing, we got about a day and a half out of the U Ultra. With brightness set to automatic and Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular data enabled, we slogged through an eight-hour workday’s worth of emails, social media updates, Slack messages, and app updates without about 40 percent power to spare.

HTC estimates the U11’s battery life at 24.5 hours on 3G/4G, and up to 14 days on standby. That’s on par with the U Ultra, which HTC’s pegs at 26 hours on 3G/4G and 13 days on 3G/4G. The Snapdragon 835’s power efficiency could give the a boost in real-world usage, of course. And there’s a chance that HTC’s optimizations — and U11’s lack of secondary display — will make a meaningful difference day-to-day. But as of now, we’re not anticipating a drastic difference.

The U11 and U Ultra both support Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 standard, which delivers roughly 1 hour of battery power for every 1 minute of charge.

Given the negligible difference in battery life between the U11 and U Ultra, we’re calling a tie this round.

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